Area Congressman Has Literally Nothing Better to Do Than Debate Ship Names

Sometimes, it's remarkable the extent to which elected officials will go just to be complete dickheads if they believe that there are enough dickheads out there in the electorate to make being a dickhead a good career move.

A while back, the Navy proposed to name a ship after Congressman John Lewis. This was widely applauded as a fitting honor for one of the few true American heroes to be found in the House of Representatives. But we all had reckoned without Congressman Stephen Palazzo, a congresscritter from Mississippi, who has sized up the dickheadedness of his constituency with a jeweler's eye.

But Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.) said believes the naming of ships should be reserved for former presidents, war heroes and people who have served in the military, which neither Lewis (D-Ga.) nor Levin (D-Mich.) did. "My amendment has nothing — absolutely zero — to do with John Lewis or any other member of Congress," Palazzo said in a statement. The measure was introduced as an amendment to the annual defense spending bill scheduled to be debated in the House this week. The proposal would have prevent the Pentagon from using any federal funds to name ships for "any member of Congress, living or deceased, unless such member served as the President of the United States or as a member of the Armed Forces."

This has nothing to do with John Lewis, although, if Palazzo is serious, he's also going to have to re-name the USS John Stennis, which is a 1092-foot nuclear aircraft carrier. (Lewis was going to get a fleet replenishment oiler, but a brand new one, so there's that.)

Like Palazzo, Stennis was from Mississippi and, when he was a local prosecutor, he convicted three African-American men whose confessions had been tortured out of them. This case went all the way up to the Supreme Court before the brutal absurdity of the whole matter was corrected, and Stennis believed they got it wrong. (Google Brown v. Mississippi for details.)

John Lewis, of course, shed his blood to help create a nation where this kind of thing never would happen any more. But Palazzo says this has nothing to do with Lewis, so all of this is irrelevant, I guess. Jesus, these people.

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